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Seventy-five economists, including seven Nobel winners, have signed a letter advocating an increase in the minimum wage. The letter was preceded by a New York Timeseditorial on January 2 making the same argument. I assume that there will be an opposing letter shortly, probably also including some Nobel signers.

The Department of Energy spends $29 billion per year on various schemes with a disastrous track record, often with bipartisan support. From regulations that destabilize markets, decrease domestic output and harm consumers, to subsidies that pick and choose winners and losers, this department is a perfect example of a white elephant – an expensive project of little to no useful purpose.

A lot of federal weapons were created to fight President Lyndon Johnson’s ”War on Poverty,” and some of the biggest were in education. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher Education Act, and Head Start are all parts of Johnson’s overall effort to end poverty and create a “Great Society.” They also share two other things in common: pretty damning evidence that they are failures, and Cato videos laying out the bad news.

Wasteful spending is a fundamental problem with the way the government works. Private businesses can also make bad decisions, have cost overruns, and misallocate investments. But private markets have built-in mechanisms to minimize those problems, whereas the government does not.

The Department of Agriculture spends over $150 billion dollars per year on various programs related to agriculture and food. It spends tens of billions on farm subsidies that largely go to growers of just a few crops: wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton. Beyond this, it subsidizes food through the federal food stamp program, which is rife with waste and corruption.

The New York Times today described a vast Social Security Disability fraud scheme among retired New York City police officers and firefighters. The retirees were collecting tens of thousands of dollars per year in fraudulent SSDI payments by faking various illnesses. Many of the claims stemmed from false allegations of disabilities caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Any American who travels must deal with the Transportation Safety Administration. The Bush administration made many mistakes in dealing with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Creating a government monopoly to handle transportation safety was one of the worst.